Eating Thai-style

To visit Thailand, is to eat.

The second we hit the streets, we are hungry again. It doesn’t matter if we just ate the free “ABF” (“American Breakfast”) at the hotel. We walk, we pass the vendor selling ready-to-be-squeezed-just-for-you orange juice. We walk further, we pass someone selling chicken, meatballs, and all manner of foods speared on sticks, I want a few of ‘dem hot wings. A few feet down, I want to buy a dozen of those giant, crispy prawns and start tearing the heads off right on the sidewalk.

Food is everywhere and available almost anytime. And portable. Although lobster-flavored potato chips and poxi sticks are accessible at any nearby 7-11, fresh, ripe fruit is always close at hand from a street vendor. You can easily score pineapples, watermelon, and strawberries from any street vendor. Getting your 5 a day in Thailand is not an issue. Oh, sure, you can get plenty of fruit in the States but will there be someone there to peel, cut, put in a plastic baggy for you and send you on your way? C’mon, pineapple? It’s just too much dang work. And for less than what you’d probably dig out from the bottom of your purse (15 cents), you can walk away happily spearing pineapple chunks out of a plastic bag. Bags of unripe mango are sliced up and accompanied by even tinier bags of a sweet-salty pink mixture. What makes it pink, I’m not so sure, but it’s probably a safe bet to guess it’s some sort of shrimp product. And despite the stomach aches I got every single time I ate unripe mango, its combination of crunchy-sweet-sour-y goodness, made it impossible for me to resist, especially knowing I would not be able to duplicate the flavors back in the States.

Meanwhile, the S.O. is like a bloodhound sniffing out vendors selling the holy triad of chicken, papaya salad and sticky rice. He doesn’t have to look far. Entrepreneurship is strong in Thailand. If you’ve got some floor space and a wok, you’re pretty much ready to set up shop. Motorbikes rigged with side carts outfitted with propane tanks and tiny charcoal grills roam the streets, stopping anywhere hungry-looking people congregate. Walking around the city streets, amidst the smoke and exhaust, you can occasionally get a welcome whiff of grilling meats and fish. So good. Glass cases of rotisserie chicken popped up everywhere, crispy, golden skin covering meat infused with lemongrass and galanga. Almost every street corner has makeshift eateries with plastic tables, little plastic stools and what looks like rolls of toilet paper on each table serving as napkins. Thais must be a nation of neat eaters, dabbers. Napkins there are the wispiest, tiniest rectangles of paper. How one is supposed to keep dribbles of noodle soup off one’s lap with these napkins was a skill I failed to master the short time I was there.

The most interesting things in Thailand happens down low. I’m not referring to clandestine occurrences that happen on the downlow or DL. But, if you keep your line of sight close to the ground, you’ll see life happening. Naked toddlers drinking water out of a bucket. Mothers taking a break from the heat lounging on cool, tiled floors. Tiny old ladies, comfortably squatting next to large woks, gently stirring simmering green curry. Mmm…just in time for my next meal.

Getting Our Motor Running in Thailand

Speed up. Don’t slow down. Go to the left. Squeeze between.

Everyday, millions of Thai men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, babies to octogenarians, defy death with an easy-breezy non-chalance that would make most Americans crap their pants.

Everywhere the S.O. and I went in Thailand, the primary mode of conveyance was the motorbike. Everyone had one. Motorbikes seemed to outnumber, cars, buses, taxis, túk-túks and săwngthăews. School kids, delivery people, food vendors, and people getting from A to B, jumped on and off motor bikes like they were stepping on and off a curb.

Bangkok was dizzying in its traffic craziness. The lane markings were faded and were only suggestions, really. Túk-túk drivers tooled around farang (foreigners) and locals alike, in tricked out motorbikes with seats for two tourists and probably up to four Thai people, tiny as they are.

The narrow streets that snake through and connect major thoroughfares in Bangkok are so complex and confusing that even taxi drivers occasionally have to stop and ask directions. Túk-túks are made to zip up, down and around the backstreet sois, going at breakneck speeds where cars are too wide to fit.

But it’s the motorbikes that have the all-access pass. They go where cars, túk-túks and săwngthăews cannot. I often saw them driving the wrong direction, I suspect because the next turnaround was a little too far away to bother. (By the way, Thais drive on the left side of the road, the driver’s wheel is on the right side of the car. It’s like landing in Bizarro world for the uninitiated.) Motorbikes drove on sidewalks, on piers…places in the West where pedestrians ruled and where you’d be slapped with a ticket faster than Zsa Zsa slaps a police officer if you were caught driving down the Santa Monica pier. The S.O. didn’t need much convincing from me not to rent a motorbike in Bangkok. I guess his primitive urge for self-preservation kicked in. I threw him a bone—“We’ll rent one in Chiang Mai!”

We went up and down the Chao Phraya in riverboats, a much less crazy and hectic way to travel, stopping at various piers and footing it to different sites.

In Chiang Mai, the S.O. rented a sweet little Honda motorbike. It was a “Jaguar”, grr. I had a blue helmet with a “UFO” sticker on it. Almost brand new, just a few thousand miles on it, I felt okay about riding it as long as I didn’t have to drive it. Less populated, less “urban”, Chiang Mai was a bit safer, but only by the few inches more clearance we had between the bus to the left of us and the car to the right of us.

In the streets, riders protected themselves from the waves of soot and exhaust with surgical face masks and ski masks, their bikes weighed down with the day’s groceries or deliveries at their feet. Passengers were never passive, so comfortable in their spots, they easily gave up their hands to carry boxes, crates, packages and sacks. My hands were always clutching my S.O.’s torso for dear life.

I saw Thai mothers clutching their babies—infants—close to their chests with one arm, driving with the other, trios of schoolgirls riding side saddle, and a family of four out for a stroll. Dad, kid, Mom and kid all sandwiched together on single motorbike. I wondered how kids with their too-tiny hands fully grasped the bike handles as they stood in front of their motoring grandmothers, and dusted me and Vila, who putt-putted behind them at a comfortable 40 mph.

We had worked up enough confidence in Chiang Mai that by the time the boy and I got to Koh Chang, we had abandoned our helmets altogether. It didn’t help that my helmet was pink and made for a 12-twelve year old’s cranium; my S.O. claimed that his helmet messed up his hair. I had to agree. I will only say that the vacation m indset does tend to displace reason. Me and the S.O. raced around hairpin curves, navigated the two lane roads, drove in pitch black darkness and struggled (at times) to climb the steep hills around the island. I tried not to take it too personally that I had to get off the motorbike and walk up a few hills. Our Koh Chang motorbike was not as powerful as our bike in Chiang Mai. For reals. Or maybe it was because it was used to hauling tiny Thai booty rather than my big-American booty, the owner of which had no choice but to start eating carbs again in Thailand, which really didn’t help the drag coefficient of the bike. Oh well.

We felt completely exposed on the motorbike but for the most part, completely safe. Thai drivers looked out for each other. There’s no such thing as road rage there. No one is chucking any dogs out car windows there. No one gives each other dirty looks and pantomimes expletives at each other. That’s just how they roll. The way Americans drive, I would never elect to abandon my ten-year old Jeep Cherokee with its bumper hanging on by a thread, reminding me of a cigarette dangling from corner of someone’s mouth. In America, I seek the protection of my car from other drivers. And it just wasn’t that way in Thailand.

Creeping into Bangkok

We crept into Bangkok in the middle of the night, when the streets were nearly empty, save for a few stray dogs and a smattering of folks hanging out on street corners, sitting on plastic stools and slurping up bowlfuls of noodles.

The next morning, we were eager to hit the streets, undeterred by fatigue and jet lag, despite traveling for over 15 hours, the night before. After our “American” buffet breakfast at our hotel, (I am not normally a fan of food coloring but I could not bring myself to eat a white, breakfast hot dog. But that’s a topic for a different blog.), the S.O. and I venture out of our hotel, walk around the corner and are immediately assaulted by a wave of noise, pollution, people, cars and motor bikes. It was like taking a few drags off an exhaust pipe. Welcome to Bangkok!

But there was beauty here…we just had to seek it out.